La guerra tra Iran e Iraq.

La guerra tra l’Iran e l’Iraq (1980-89) è scarsamente nota al pubblico occidentale, se non addirittura pressoché offuscata dalle successive operazioni militari statunitensi contro il regime di Saddām Husayn: la prima e seconda guerra del Golfo. È sconcertante, se si pensa all’impegno eccezionale in termini di forniture militari da parte del nostro Paese: dopo Unione Sovietica, Francia e Cina, l’Italia si classifica al quarto posto per vendita di armi all’Iraq e al quattordicesimo per rifornimenti concessi all’Iran. A livello internazionale, quella che è stata l’ultima guerra convenzionale del XX secolo si è rivelata il principale teatro di scontro per l’egemonia sul Medio Oriente, nonché un arduo banco di prova per la tenuta delle politiche di Stati Uniti e Unione Sovietica

Ashïk Kerib: menestrelli sul limes.

A love-story between a young minstrel and a rich girl from Tiflis, with no hope of a swift happy ending because of their different social background, becomes a metaphor of life itself in the Ashïk Kerib. This is a well-known tale in popular Turk-Azerbaydjanian literature, famously brought to the screen by Paradjanov. This tale is especially interesting as a case-study on the porous boundaries between Persian and Turkish Ottoman worlds, focusing of the role played in the events by the enigmatic figure of Khiḍr and the references to the general musical context

On the Kabīsa of the Saffarid Amīr Khalaf ibn Aḥmad

The Persian risāla titled Nawrūznāma is a classical work of adab, featuring an account on the history of Iranian calendar and materials (notices, aneddoctes etc.) about courtly and popular customs linked with the Iranian New Year Day. Here we will discuss an isolated notice about an intervention on the solar calendar of the Iranian tradition performed by Khalaf ibn Aḥmad, amīr of Sīstān. The inaccurancy of the Nawrūznāma on historical and astronomical matters does not reduce the importance of this ancient source as a literary work, revealing of its own time's mindset. In fact, the text gives us a plausible clue about the importance of the long reign of Khusraw I for the history of Persian chronology, thus supporting some of the hypotheses traced out by modern scholars. Moreover, it recounts of actual celebrations of the beginning of Spring – to be called Nawrūz – at the time of Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mūn. The conclusion is that, although roughly, the Nawrūznāma not only corroborates other extant sources on the existence of alternative – or parallel – ways of time-reckoning in the Iranian world, but also opens the way for a more precise reconstruction of the relation between a well-ordered social life and kingly governance, that, in Seljuk times, was going to be increasingly thought as essential

La guerra dell'Urss in Afghanistan.

L’Afghanistan, terra martoriata da un cinquantennio di guerre, è la posta in gioco di una partita mondiale che si è aperta con la «Rivoluzione di Aprile» del 1978. Tornato a essere obiettivo geostrategico primario nelle ultime fasi della Guerra Fredda, non ha più conosciuto la pace, nonostante il ritiro dell’Unione Sovietica completato nel 1989: il governo comunista afgano di Najibullah tenne testa alla guerriglia dei gruppi islamici dei mujāhidīn solo fino al 1992, dopodiché il Paese sprofondò in una spirale di violenza che favorì l’ascesa dei talebani nel 1996 e l’affermarsi del loro regime autoritario e oscurantista. Dopo un nuovo ventennio di occupazione da parte della coalizione guidata dagli Stati Uniti, drammaticamente terminato nel 2022, i talebani sono tornati a essere l’unica forza politica in grado di controllare il Paese

The role of al-Bīrūnī in the history of hydrology. A modern vision 600 years in advance.

In today's contemporary world, a walk through the epistemology of the hydrological cycle can help us to frame many current problems in a broader framework, reminding us to remain humble. Among all the scientific concepts that are taught in schools of all kinds and levels everywhere on the planet, the water cycle is one of the concepts that remain in the head even after a long time from the end of compulsory school. The ease in remembering this theory can be attributed to its relative simplicity: water evaporates from lakes, seas and oceans; the vapor forms the clouds; from the clouds come the rains and snows that feed the glaciers and Earth's surface and underground waterways, which in turn return to the oceans, and so on. However, the mechanism is only apparently simple. The trained hydrologist knows very well that studying and communicating the complexity hidden behind hydrological science requires patience and dedication. Modern hydrology, in the Western world, can be considered born at the end of the 17th century thanks to two members of the Académie Royale des Sciences: Pierre Perrault (1611-1680) and Edme Mariotte (1620-1684). The treatises of these two scholars – De l'origine des fontaines (Perrault 1674) and Traité du mouvement des eaux et des autres corps fluides (Mariotte1686) – can be considered the first attempts to verify the actual ability of precipitation to supply rivers and sources by means of quantitative analyses. Anyway, it is clear that a modern vision of the hydrological cycle was present in the Islamic world at the time of al-Bīrūnī. Although he did not leave writings dedicated solely to hydrological sciences, al-Bīrūnī's "modern" vision of the hydrological cycle clearly emerges in some extant passages of his works. In this memoir, we will discuss how al-Bīrūnī's vision of the hydrological cycle mirrors a theoretical framework widespread among the Islamic scholars of his age, and how its fundamental concepts anticipate the modern hydrological vision that took shape in Europe in the mid-1600s

An Index of Nayrūz Occurrences in Abbasid Literary Sources.

This volume is the result of a two-years research project, focusing on an exhaustive indexing of all edited Arabic sources mentioning the Iranian festival of Nayrūz (Nawrūz) in the Abbasid age (750-1258 CE). The Index is meant as a first step towards filling a void in the study of the Abbasid age, providing a ground-breaking instrument for scholars interested in the study of chronology and socio-economical history of the classical Islamicate world. Further studies on this subjects are sorely needed, in light of the literary presence of this festival and its connection to fiscal matters, as a quick look to the present volume will make clear to the reader. Moreover, this is in agreement with all contemporary studies on the history of Iranian strands in Islamic pre-modern societies, which seldom fails to mention the need for a systematic study of literary evidence

Theoretical Overview: The New Mesons

After commenting on the state of contemporary hadronic physics and spectroscopy, I highlight four areas where the action is: searching for the relevant degrees of freedom, mesons with beauty and charm, chiral symmetry and the D_{sJ} levels, and X(3872) and the lost tribes of charmonium.Comment: 10 pages, uses jpconf.cls; talk at First Meeting of the APS Topical Group on Hadronic Physic